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Urban wildlife: Many in B.C. find animals in the backyard a curse

Deer and other wildlife have adapted to living in cities and urban areas, such as this deer photographed in south Surrey.

Photograph by: Les Bazso
, PNG

I rose one recent morning, poured a coffee, stepped onto the back deck to admire the fog drifting off the sea and found myself in the company of a blacktail doe and two slightly shaggy yearlings just beginning to shed their winter coats.

Wild deer in the backyard and on the boulevards — a spotted fawn no bigger than a lamb bounded across the road in front of my car just yesterday — are an increasingly common sight, even in British Columbia’s most urbane gardens.

It’s not just Bambi who’s moved into the neighbourhood, either. Deer moving uptown have brought some unexpected baggage. Their chief predator, the usually shy and reclusive cougar, has followed its food source, bringing a real hazard to public safety.

Just this week a cougar was shot by conservation officers in Coquitlam. It signed its own death warrant when it menaced a woman, lunging at her while she sat behind a window.

The general — and justifiable — standard is that when a top-of-the-food-chain predator shows no fear of humans, it has to be killed before it starts preying on us (and in this case, an elementary school was near).

In Nanaimo, there were three cougar sightings early this week, although no aggressive, threatening or predatory behaviour was reported. The week before that there were three cougar sightings in Trail, and they came on the heels of three juvenile cougars that had to be shot in residential Castlegar.

Nobody should panic, of course, as attacks on humans by cougars are extremely rare — there are far more fatalities from bee stings each year. But it is a reminder that increasingly, suburban joggers and walkers would be wise to refresh their backcountry hiking expertise.

If you encounter a big cat, make yourself as big as you can. Spread your jacket, open an umbrella, pick up children, stomp your feet and talk loudly. Sound and look menacing — you want the animal to decide you’re a threat, not prey. Don’t turn your back. Never run.

Experienced wilderness hikers carry a stout walking stick and if a cougar behaves aggressively, they are prepared to fight back.

B.C. isn’t the only place that’s coping with the wonders and headaches of urban wildlife, although we still have more undeveloped wilderness than most places.

The migration of wildlife from backcountry to downtown is a continental phenomenon, one of the fascinating developments of the 21st century.

Scientists call it “synurbization.” It refers to a growing recognition that cities themselves represent a new evolutionary trend, what one researcher has described as an explosion of new and strange types of artificial environments in the natural landscape to which wildlife adapted over millions of years.

Yet if this process reconfigures ancient natural habitats, it also creates a portfolio of new ecological niches that wild animals may colonize.

Nicholas Read, a former Vancouver Sun reporter who now teaches journalism at Langara College, has written a fascinating and popular book about it, City Critters: Wildlife in the Urban Jungle.

“They’ve moved into places we used to think of as belonging to people and no one else. The strange thing is that for a long time they did it without anyone noticing,” Read observes. “Now we can’t help noticing them because they are everywhere.”

Not that we should be surprised. Human relocation from undeveloped hinterlands to our manufactured landscape occurred first and is one of the most rapid and extensive migrations in history. A century ago, more than 80 per cent of us lived rural lives, intruders into the habitats of wild creatures. Now, fewer than 15 per cent of British Columbians are rural inhabitants and it’s the wild that intrudes into the domesticated spaces most of us inhabit.

I still find the presence of urban wildlife a pleasant surprise, but many fellow citizens see deer, raccoons, squirrels, Canada geese, crows, coyotes, cougars, black bears or bobcats as more curse than miracle and in some cases — far fewer instances than popular perception suggests, however — they have cause.

Not so dear

Deer have become a problem for drivers, for example. In the provincial capital, where the regional district is grappling with urban deer management, the number of collisions between deer and motor vehicles tripled between 1991 and 2005. In Metro Vancouver, it doubled over the same period.

The estimated cost of dealing with deer killed by vehicles on city roads is about $100 per accident. That means that in Greater Victoria they claimed more than $268,000 scarce tax dollars between 2001 and 2010. Provincewide, ICBC reports animal-related accident claims of almost $278 million between 1997 and 2007, although this total includes high-speed highway collisions outside urban areas, too.

And, as Nanaimo discovered last week when a car killed a mother bear and left two orphaned cubs, it can be tragic for the animals as well.

But most urban complaints about deer are cosmetic and revolve around their browsing upon the ornamental flowers, shrubs, fruit trees and vegetables adorning city gardens. The complaints are usually accompanied by the claim that there’s a vast over-population of deer.

Yet B.C. wildlife inventories show that while more deer are being seen within city limits, blacktail deer populations on Vancouver Island are actually in a steep decline — in large part because of us.

Logging and residential sprawl disrupted the ecosystems that sustained Island deer. The blacktail herd collapsed from almost 300,000 deer before 1968 to about 55,000 today. In the same period, the human population grew by 50 per cent to about 750,000.

In other words, for every two additional humans who moved to the Island, about four blacktail deer were lost.

These declines were predicted by wildlife biologists as the backcountry food supply was disrupted. First, there was a sudden increase in forage as old growth forests were logged, opening the understory to more sunlight. Then there was a sudden decrease in forage as fast-growing new forests matured. Logging subsequently moved into winter browsing areas. Urban development encroached upon the forest edge. Deer weren’t part of the economic equation. During one bitter winter, about 100,000 perished.

Faced with dwindling food supplies, deer migrated from where forage was scarce to where it was more plentiful. The concentration of shrinking numbers in a smaller, more contested space has created the illusion that deer populations are exploding when the opposite has been true.

Newspapers’ editorial pages are rife these days with letters complaining about stripped gardens, deer menacing the public and so on, usually accompanied by demands that they be relocated, that urban hunting regulations be relaxed or that professional slaughters with venison sales be permitted.

Municipal governments respond to public demands. Cranbrook, for example, presses ahead with a kill program; Nanaimo is watching closely; so is Penticton; and a district-wide cull is one option being examined by Victoria’s Capital Regional District.

Not everyone agrees, though. Invermere suspended its deer cull after being sued by a local deer protection society. And other jurisdictions report that culls are only temporarily effective because other animals will migrate to fill the vacant niche. Thus, “controlling” the urban population further depletes the declining wild herd.

Threat sometimes exaggerated

Misperceptions and their consequences don’t just apply to ungulates.

Coyotes, for example, are seen as a growing threat to domestic pets and children. Alarms have been raised recently in Metro, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, Ottawa and elsewhere. There are thought to be up to 3,000 coyotes scattered amid the 145,000 dogs and 2.3 million humans inhabiting Metro.

Examine the statistical evidence and scientific research and the threat seems minuscule.

One detailed study of urban coyote scat in Calgary, for example, discovered that less than two per cent showed any evidence of a coyote having killed and eaten dogs or cats. Almost 80 per cent of scat was comprised of other small mammals, so coyotes may actually help control mice and rats — the other urban wildlife that’s seldom mentioned.

Rats are estimated to cause up to $1 billion in damage to North American homes each year. Damage includes electrical wiring, insulation, roofing, gardens and ruined food — a single rat can consume 50 kilograms of food over its lifespan, but will easily ruin 500 kilograms in the process. Thus, 100 rats in the wrong place might render 50,000 kilograms of food unfit for human consumption.

Canada geese can be a problem because their massed droppings can elevate fecal coliform counts in public parks, on beaches and in waters where the public likes to swim. They’ve been described as a “menace” in the media, even threatening airlines.

There’s truth to this. The Canada goose population has grown to more than five million birds since 1970, with most of the growth among resident populations that like to flock near airports — which are often in low-lying areas, frequently near waterways that attract waterfowl.

Between 1990 and 2005, according to one aviation study, Canada geese were involved in 1,279 collisions with aircraft, some resulting in serious damage. But another major study of more than 16,000 civil and military aircraft accidents recently discovered that roughly 12,000 were caused by human error related to skills and judgment.

Metro Vancouver’s raccoons have been reported behaving aggressively toward humans. But in reality, the risk of being attacked by a “psycho” raccoon, as one tabloid dubbed such an incident, pales by comparison to the risk of being attacked by a fellow human.

There were half a dozen reported raccoon incidents last year, for example. But in 2011, 87 British Columbians were murdered, 36,716 were assaulted and there were 66,784 violent criminal offences reported.

City dwellers are about 13,000 times more likely to be attacked by a fellow citizen than by a wild animal. And if Canadian Safety Council estimates are accurate, you are 90,000 times more likely to be bitten by somebody’s dog, including your own, than by a raccoon or a coyote.

Nevertheless, civic governments are increasingly asked to deal with the uncanny ability of wild animals to adapt and prosper in the built landscapes that humans once considered the exclusive preserve of themselves and their domesticated pets.

And this raises serious ethical questions, not merely for civic authorities, but also for those who want to be rid of creatures that inconveniently migrate to urban areas because their habitats elsewhere are being degraded, defiled, disrupted or diminished by human activity.

The great divide

At one end of the spectrum are vehement animal rights advocates who argue the problem is entirely ours, not the animals.’ At the other, an exasperated fringe that argues: “Just shoot the damn things.”

Somewhere in the middle reside most of us, concerned about safety and reducing damage but not entirely displeased at this small intrusion of wild nature into our engineered environment.

As I looked on, the blacktail family browsed contentedly on the back lawn just below the tree house we built in a Pacific maple for our daughter 15 years ago. The tree has since begun to dismantle the structure again now that she’s about to graduate from university, a reminder of nature’s resilience.

Not that the tree house fell into complete disuse. I climbed up to do some minor repairs a few years ago and discovered a mother raccoon had moved in temporarily and was using it as a nursery — cute little kits they were, too — although for some reason it’s been spurned by the red squirrels that occasionally use its roof as a landing pad.

Just this winter my daughter reported that a raccoon still too young to be afraid of humans had padded up onto the sliding glass door to the deck outside her quarters, pressed its paws and nose to the glass and examined her at length while she was studying.

Kind of like me, examining the deer on the back lawn.

The two yearlings looked up in alarm. Mom just gave me a slow once-over and then went back to brunch. We’ve come to know each other quite well, the doe and I.

Last year, those yearlings were a couple of tiny spotted fawns. They would burst onto the lawn and gambol like the proverbial spring lambs, jumping and mock-butting while mother kept a careful eye on the humans on the deck.

By my count, this is the 17th generation of fawns to find safety in our back garden — and the gardens of equally sanguine neighbours up the street and down — but their presence hasn’t come without some adjustments all around.

It’s not just the lawn upon which the deer dine. They so liked the Japanese holly in the rock garden that I transplanted to a pot on the deck, which has since morphed into a kind of rescue garden. They’re especially partial to geraniums and love their petunias, too. Day lilies, dahlias, pansies and impatiens have all now migrated to safety in pots.

The deer turn up their noses at nicotiana, though, so it’s in the front border. They don’t like marigolds and shun poppies of all varieties, Welsh, California and Oriental alike, but I like the bright colours so there are lots of them. Deer detest alyssum, too.

But they love roses, so the heritage climbers have moved to a fenced area. Oregon grape, salal, cotoneaster, potentilla, kinnikinnick, lavender and bamboo they dislike, so these provide grace notes elsewhere.

One never knows, though. My neighbours warned that deer would devour the azaleas. They never touch mine. Or the grape vines.

The sumac that’s taken root in an old stump they shun but there’s now an eight-foot mesh fence around the apple trees and the planter boxes for garden vegetables. I’m told deer can leap a fence like that but the ones who visit my garden never have shown an inclination.

So we’ve arrived at a quid pro quo. If they’ve adapted to us, we’re adapting to them.

We garden outside the fences with plants they don’t like and inside with plants they do. They’re welcome to eat in their part of the garden. Plants for which we both share an affinity either go into protected areas or we forego them.

As I say, however, some of my fellow citizens, having blissfully mowed down the deer’s habitat to pay for their hospitals and shopping malls, are now angry over the displaced deer moving in to lunch on their gardens.

Deer have been evolving in North American landscapes for millions of years. The vast human changes imposed upon it that Metro represents have occurred over the last 100 years or less.

Maybe, as Nicholas Read so eloquently argues, we should all be a little more patient in figuring out how to live together with our fellow creatures.

“The lives and futures of urban wildlife, resilient though they appear, are firmly (or perhaps precariously) in our hands,” Read observes. “As we go, so do they. We can either hold on to them for dear life as some of the last precious vestiges of wildlife on this rapidly shrinking and overcrowded planet, or we can selfishly and carelessly let them go. The choice is ours.”

Got an interesting, humorous, irritating or appalling anecdote about your own adventures with urban wildlife? A photo to go with it?

Email us at sunnewstips@vancouversun.com with “Urban Wildlife Contest” in the subject line and Stephen Hume will pick five of the best anecdotes. Photos (maximum 1 MB) should be attached to the email. For each winner, The Vancouver Sun will donate one of Nicholas Read’s books on urban wildlife to an elementary school library in the winner’s name.

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